other.  The deeper God plunges the comet into the darkness out yonder, the closer does it come to the sun at its nearest distance, and the longer does it stand basking and glowing in the full blaze of the glory from the central orb.  So in our revolution, the measure of the distance from the farthest point of our darkest earthly sorrow, to the throne, may help us to the measure of the closeness of the bright, perfect, perpetual glory above, when we are on the throne:  for if so be that we are sons, we must suffer with Him; if so be that we suffer, we must be glorified together!

THE REVELATION OF SONS

   ’For the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for
   the manifestation of the sons of God.’—­ROMANS viii. 19.

The Apostle has been describing believers as ‘sons’ and ‘heirs.’  He drops from these transcendent heights to contrast their present apparent condition with their true character and their future glory.  The sad realities of suffering darken his lofty hopes, even although these sad realities are to his faith tokens of joint-heirship with Jesus, and pledges that if our inheritance is here manifested by suffering with him, that very fact is a prophecy of common glory hereafter.  He describes that future as the revealing of a glory, to which the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared; and then, in our text he varies the application of that thought of revealing and thinks of the subjects of it as being the ‘sons of God.’  They will be revealed when the glory which they have as joint-heirs with Christ is revealed in them.  They walk, as it were, compassed with mist and cloud, but the splendour which will fall on them will scatter the envious darkness, and ’when Christ who is our life shall appear, then shall His co-heirs also appear with Him in glory.’

We may consider—­

I. The present veil over the sons of God.

There is always a difference between appearance and reality, between the ideal and its embodiments.  For all men it is true that the full expression of oneself is impossible.  Each man’s deeds fall short of disclosing the essential self in the man.  Every will is hampered by the fleshly screen of the body.  ’I would that my tongue could utter the thoughts that arise in me,’ is the yearning of every heart that is deeply moved.  Contending principles successively sway every personality and thwart each other’s expression.  For these, and many other reasons, the sum-total of every life is but a shrouded representation of the man who lives it; and we, all of us, after all efforts at self-revelation, remain mysteries to our fellows and to ourselves.  All this is eminently true of the sons of God.  They have a life-germ hidden in their souls, which in its very nature is destined to fill and expand their whole being, and to permeate with its triumphant energy every corner of their nature.